Thursday, December 10, 2009

Sometimes PR firms send releases to publications having nothing to do with its coverage area, which is how I wound up receiving a release titled: David vs Goliath: Tobacconists Condemn Irresponsibility of W.H.O. Report on Smoking, which was sent to my nintendo.about.com email.

It's an odd release that portrays the World Health Organization as a tool of corporations and the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers as a struggling group of mom and pop stores compelled to battle the unfair claims of W.H.O. The oddest part of the press release is that it says the W.H.O.'s report is full of "wild, unsupportable claims” but refuses to state what those claims are, claiming that repeating these claims would just give them more coverage. Most organizations would try and refute unsupportable claims, but the IPCPR seems to feel that saying the report is wrong is quite enough.

It fascinates me that the release positions the IPCPR as a David battling the World Health monster. And there is a curmudgeon quality to the release that does suggest it is the work of a small, rather unpolished PR firm reduced to quoting angry, unpersuasive statements from its employer like "What would you expect from an organization that refuses to hire people who smoke?”

Yes, tobacco is under siege, but if it's a David, it's a David that was once a Goliath and has got cut down to size. The approach is similar to that of the Republicans, who are acting like a feisty little group of rebels even though they have run this country for most of the last thirty years (of course, they even acted like that when they were in power). But for me, a Goliath who has hit hard times is never a David.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

When I was a baby, my mother did what many mothers did; she bought books on how to raise babies. Parents do this because they're afraid of screwing up.

My mom took the advice of Dr. Spock, who at that time told parents that if their children started crying in their crib, you should just let them cry it out. Picking them up would make them soft, dependent crybabies. Your child needed to learn to deal with life right away.

And so, according to my mom, she would stand there, watching me cry, wracked with guilt but afraid that picking me up would lead to my ruin.

Years later, I hear, Dr. Spock said oops, he was wrong. Apparently, if you just leave babies alone when they cry they feel abandoned and forsaken and develop trust issues and have less of a bond with their parents, something like that.

So I figured that had all been settled, until today when I was watching an episode of the TV series Being Erica in which a parent talked about "self-soothing."

I looked it up. Also known as Ferberizing, the idea is, guess what? Let your baby cry it out.

Well, it's a little more detailed than that. The idea is to train your baby to sleep through the night, so you put him to bed, let him cry a few minutes, go in, pat him but don't pick him up, leave for a while longer, come back if he's still crying but still don't pick him up and so on. Eventually you've got your baby trained to go to sleep and leave you alone.

I imagine this does work, because once the baby realizes his parents aren't going to do anything for him when he's upset, he'll learn to deal with it. I'm sure if you stop feeding a six-year-old he'll figure out how to use a chair to get to the cabinets and find food and make himself meals too; children can learn to do a lot of things if they have to. The question is, how does this all affect the child's trust of its parents and his sense of whether he's got support in life or is on his own.

Would I be a different person today if my mom had picked me up when I cried? I have no idea. But I do think that parents might be better off listening to their instincts than reading a book. If you feel like picking your baby up when he cries, you should probably go ahead and do it. If you don't mind the crying, ignore him. But quit reading books on the subject, because in ten years there will be a whole new set of books that say totally different things.

Perhaps there should just be a golden rule for babies; treat babies the way you would want to be treated if you were a baby. Or perhaps the rule should be; parents should only do as much as they can do without losing it and crying themselves. I don't know; I'm not going to have any babies so it's not a decision I'll ever have to make.

But as someone who doesn't know enough to make an informed decision, I still think there's something a little creepy about this self-soothing thing.

I feel like I was pretty much channeled into a path by the way my brain works. I can't hear people in noisy places, so I was never good at parties or bars, meaning I tend to socialize one-on-one and have poor group socializing skills. My problems remembering faces and names makes getting to know people I run into here and there more difficult. (Oddly enough, these problems were far less evident when I was young - in school you talk to people in fairly low-noise environments and see the same people day after day, making it easier to remember who is who).

On the other hand, I have one of these brains that instantly understood how computers worked; it all made sense to me. I am the guy friends call when their computer isn't working or when they need to hook up their new DVR.

And my analytic tendency and strong reading and writing skills made it relatively easy to wind up doing what I'm doing now; writing reviews.

And so, because my brain is the way it is, I don't go to clubs, I tend to be low key and sometimes overwhelmed in group social situations and, because I'm always introducing myself to people who already know me, probably seem like a bit of a doofus.

And so, instead of becoming an international spy or a CEO, I became a nerdy, geeky computer programmer turned videogame reviewer.

Is it possible to overcome a geeky destiny? What if when I was young I had pushed myself out of my comfort zone? What if someone had actually recognized that I had what are essentially social disabilities and I had received some sort of social training to overcome them? What if, what if, what if.

I do believe that biology is to a great extent destiny, but that there is some wiggle room. After all, in spite of my geekiness, I never became a Trekkie, or joined the SCA or played Dungeons and Dragons. I didn't wind up a 40-year-old virgin or, as a movie version of the awkward, four-eyed, violin-playing kid I was would have, as a humorless bureaucrat. Instead, I moved to Manhattan on a whim, became a street performer and a songwriter and now dance the blues until 3 in the morning. Which doesn't mean I'm not still a nerd, but simply that I'm my own unique version of a nerd.

Honestly though, I would trade 20 IQ points for better social skills. But considering the oddities of the brain resting in my skull, I think I've done pretty well for myself.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I've always had trouble making out what people are saying in noisy places. I've taken hearing tests over the years, and according to them my hearing is fine, and yet, I can be with a group of people in a restaurant, and they're all having a conversation and seem to be hearing each other just fine, and I have no idea what anyone is saying, except, if I'm lucky, the person right next to me.

I finally got around to googling the problem, and found a discussion of it that proves I am not alone. From reading what people say it seems I may have Central Auditory Processing Disorder. This makes sense; my theory was, since my hearing is fine that the problem must be the way my brain was dealing with the information.

It looks like there are some treatments for CAPD, all of which seem to involve listening to something or other many many times for weeks or months. Unfortunately these seem to be treatments for children; I haven't come across anything on treatment for adults. Some people just learn to lip read, which is something I've considered. It's just a matter of forcing myself to work on it.

This is the second problem I have that almost no one else has, the other being my difficulty remembering faces. It just seems that there's something off with my brain. Unfortunately, both of these issues make socializing more difficult, which may be why I was always a bit of a loner: perhaps biology is destiny.

Monday, October 26, 2009

What I have learned from watching the TV series Hoarders is that I'm a bit of a hoarder. So I'm trying to get rid of stuff I have no good reason to keep, like my "button vest," a jeans vest covered with buttons that I wore when I was young enough to think something like this was a good idea. I'm so fond of this vest that before I toss it out, I wanted to take a picture and write down what all the buttons are.

Two batman logo buttons. A "Let the rabbit eat Trix" button. A "flower power" button. A carved wooden button that says "Love" (one of my favorites). A guitar shaped button that says "U2". A picture of Leadbelly. A psychedelic "WHO" button (I'm not even particularly a fan of the band, actually). "Why Be Normal" (one of my all-time favorite expressions). Three buttons by my friend, the artist Ron English. Some little star with a "1" on it that I think is from my boyscout uniform, or maybe cubscouts). A lady's broach, gold, with a face and a fake jewel in the forehead. "Viva Nicaragua Libre". "No Nukes in N.Y.C." A butterfly stickpin. "Shirley Chilsholm for President." "Get Out of Viet Nam." A button for the movie "Slacker." "Fuck the New World Order." A plastic box with a little plastic Pegasus flying across a painted backdrop (another favorite of mine). And a few others that aren't that interesting and are just there because I put every button I found on there.

The vest is tossed, but I still have the buttons. I feel I should see if anyone wants them before I toss them out. Perhaps I'll put an ad on craigslist: "button collection to good home."

Thursday, September 10, 2009

When I saw the email subject "ARE YOU STILL ALIVE," I assumed it was from my friend Suzanne, who writes all in caps (in a 20 point font) and will title emails things like "WHERE ARE YOU?" if I don't reply within a few hours. But it was not. It was what is now my favorite Nigerian scam letter, which tells me that a man has reported me dead in order to claim 2.5 million dollars owed me by the Nigerian government.

I like this one a lot. It's got a clever hook and a detailed story that not only makes you think you have money coming, but that someone is trying to steal it from you.

I liked it so much, I even emailed back a reply: " No, I am dead, and Mr. Johnson is welcome to the money, as I have no use for it in heaven. Thank you for your kind attention."

Here's the letter:

Attention Beneficiary,

We write to confirm if there will be any response from any of your relations concerning what we just heard from a man named Mr. Paul Johnson about yourself.

He came to our office today and informed us that you are dead and during your illness you willed him to claim your us$2.5m compensation that the Federal

Government mapped out to compensate those that were defrauded by the impostors in the local banks here in Nigeria. This was in line with an agreement reached

between this Ministry, The President of Nigeria, ALH. UMARU YAR’ADUA, The National Assembly, The World Bank, The Financial Crime Enforcement Network

(FINCEN), The United Nation (UN), The Economic & Financial Crime commission (EFCC) and The International Monetary Fund (IMF). These organizations has agreed

to compensate you with the above mentioned fund. Consequently an order of payment has been given to us via approval order No: PRES/CONT/101/2009/A.
With Ref No: BN/OHG/OXD1/2009 and Your payment file number is: BN/BEN/09 to release your ATM Card to you and also inform you about the payment. But very

surprisingly to us Mr. Paul Johnson made things very clear to us that you are dead and he is the only person you disclosed this matter with and you have

instructed him to come and claim the money if you did not make it which he came for.

We hereby decided to officially send this massage to your mail box in order to deliver this message in case if anyone has access to your mail box so that

they will know about this development and to find out if the information we received from the above named man is truth and to confirm if you are truly dead

or still alive. Failure to reply back in the next 24hrs simply means that what Mr. Paul Johnson said is truth that you are dead. Mr. Paul Johnson has even

ordered us to release your ATM card that contains $753, 000.00 to Mr. David Anderson from the United States of America. He want us to sign all the approval
documents in his favour and urged us to tell him what it will cost him to complete the process of delivering the ATM card to Mr. David Anderson home address

which he provides us with. He has agreed to pay the mailing fee for delivering the ATM card to Mr. David Anderson address in the next 48 hours.

Meanwhile, if the information we receive about you is false, kindly indicate to us because your ATM card is still intact with us as we have not changed any

information in favour of Mr. Paul Johnson. We have finalize arrangement concerning delivery of your ATM card pending when we hear from you and also receive

the delivery fee to deliver your ATM card to your home address. And you can start withdrawal of US$5,000.00 per day immediately you receive the ATM Card.

With this you are required to send to us the delivery fee of your ATM card to us so that we can deliver the card your address through Federal Diplomatic
delivery within the next 48 hours. You are advised in your own interest to reply back so we can stop further communication with Mr. Paul Johnson and Mr.

David Anderson.

In view of this development, you are requested to contact the Director Foreign Operations (ATM) Department, Mr. Francis Michael who is going to sign the

final release documents before your ATM card will be dispatched to your address. Contact him on the following E-mail address: francis.m1@aliceadsl.fr

Be informed that delivery will be made to your address within 48 hours and the delivery receipt and the Airway Bill number will be included to enable you

track it yourself. Call Mr. Francis Michael immediately you receive this message on the following telephone number: +234170-2319-1188

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

There's apparently a controversy about the game Shadow Complex because one of the writers who worked on it is open and actively anti-gay marriage. Because of this, some people have suggested boycotting the game, such as Wired writer Guy Mustapa, who writes:

Many question the efficacy of a boycott. Even Peter David, the comics writer who penned Shadow Complex’s dialogue, piped in to call the boycott “cheap and vicious and small-minded.”

He’s dead wrong there. The point of the boycott is to start the discussion and encourage people to look at the issue from a different point of view. Epic and Chair may not feel an economic sting around this boycott. Orson Scott Card may not lose an minute of sleep. But if only a handful of people notice how strongly some folks care about the issue of gay rights and take a moment to try to understand where they’re coming from then the boycott (or even the intimations of one) can be considered a success.

I disagreed strongly, and wrote a comment at the bottom of the article and then thought, hey, I haven't blogged for a while, why don't I use this comment in my blog:

The mentality behind boycotting this game is equivalent to the mentality behind the 1950s Hollywood blacklist, in which writers, actors, and directors were prevented from working because of their political opinions. True, a boycott would not have the same decimating results as a government witch hunt, but the attitude is exactly the same.

Do we really want to do this? Do we really want the left to boycott every game or movie or TV series that has connected with it anyone who is anti-gay marriage or anti-health care reform? Do we really want everyone on the right to boycott every game or movie or TV series that has connected with it anyone who is anti-war or anti-abortion?

I am no less horrified by this suggested boycott than by the concerted effort made years ago to destroy the Dixie Chicks because they said they were ashamed to have come from the same state as George W. Bush (an attempt that failed spectacularly). People actually do have a right to have their opinions, and they do have a right to employment. I'm pro gay-marriage; does that mean the anti-gay people should all refuse to read my game reviews (at, quick plug, nintendo.about.com) and encourage everyone else to follow suit? Is that really the world we want to live in, one where everyone's livelihood can be affected by every political opinion they express?

Mastrapa's statement that the point of a boycott is to "start the discussion" is ludicrous. The point of a boycott is to stop discussion; it is a way of saying "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" It is a way to bully people who disagree with you.

It is my believe that rather than trying to shut people up, we should encourage everyone to speak their mind. It is my belief that the most effective way to counter an argument is to let that argument be expressed and then rebut it.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Frankie Manning, one of the originators of the dance known as Lindy Hop, or Jitterbug, or swing, or whatever you like to call it, died this morning, two months shy of his 95th birthday. And while one can't feel too sad at a good life that lasted a very long time, it is hard to imagine a world without Frankie Manning.

When Frankie taught Lindy Hop, he would pair everyone up and then tell the guys to look at the girls.

"Fellas," he would say genially, "do you see that lady before you? That lady is a princess. And what do you do when you see a princess? You bow."

This wasn't a lesson in manners, this was a lesson in leading the swingout. Frankie would take a step back as he bent at the waist, his right arm sweeping back, and look very much as though he were bowing as his partner stepped forward.

That was what was so cool about taking classes from Frankie. He didn't just teach the mechanics of dance, he taught the attitude. Frankie was all about attitude. Watch the video below. That's Frankie dancing with Dawn Hampton, another swing legend. Nothing they're doing is particularly difficult from a technical standpoint, but it takes decades to learn to be that cool. You can see they have the music deep in their bones.

Frankie was the only teacher I've ever had who really focused on attitude. One of my favorite Frankie moves begins with a traveling tuck turn, in which you lead the girl to turn while moving foward in a straight line, and all you have to do is stay even with her as she moves. There's really nothing to that, but when Frankie moved alongside the girl, he did it with this elfen charm, this light, twinkling step (Frankie always twinkled, when he spoke, when he danced, and of course when he smiled) to what was essentially just a 2 second stroll. And he emphasized that this was part of the step, that you needed to create that feeling; you couldn't just walk along as though it didn't mean anything.

I think about the way Frankie moved when I lead that step, but I don't have it yet. Hopefully I will by the time I turn 94. I wish I could take another lesson from him, and just see again exactly how he does it, but now, alas, I am on my own.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Sometime back I signed up for some sight called ilike.com, because they had a facebook app, and this was before I got sick of facebook apps.

I'm not quite sure what ILike.com is, but you tell it what music you like and it tells you something. It will tell you when bands you like are performing, but I don't go to concerts so I set my iLike email notification settings to never tell me about favorite bands performing.

So when I got an email notice from iLike that U2 was playing near me soon, I was annoyed. I went to the site and checked my settings, and sure enough, my settings were such that I should not have received that email.

Okay, so there's some flaw with their programming. That's no big deal, sites always have issues. I'll just contact someone on the site and let them know there's a problem and give them a chance to fix it, right?

Wrong, because there is no way to contact anyone on the site. There is no way to report any problem. I could not find a single, solitary email address for users. So then I thought, okay, I'll just close my account so the can't bother me any more. But guess what? I couldn't find any way to close my account.

So I added iLike into my spam filter. iLike is dead to me. A site that does not want to hear from its users should not, in my opinion, have any users.

Monday, March 30, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, my PC died. Not the PC itself, actually, just the operating system Windows Vista, which stopped booting up. After a lot of internet research and a lot of trying this and that, I gave up and wiped the hard disk for a fresh install.

I did not, however, install Vista again; I went back to XP. Because I have hated Vista since I "upgraded" to it. The terrible security system that wouldn't let you do the simplest things without asking you if you were sure, and wouldn't let you do some things at all (there were certain folders and files on my computer for the entire time I had Vista simply because it wouldn't let me delete them. The software incompatibility that included Microsoft's own products. The ass-backwards way they tried to improve Windows for gaming and made it worse instead. I had meant to write a whole blog entry about the ways in which Vista sucked, but never got around to it. It is shocking that Microsft would issue what is at best a poorly designed service pack as a new OS, although more understandable if you read this interesting description of how the Vista shut down interface was designed (read the comments too; some are from other Microsoft programmers).

I didn't instantly go back to XP simply because it seemed like too much work. And I thought I would miss the handful of new, minor but useful features of Vista. But I was wrong, I don't miss Vista. Forget those commercials in which Microsoft tried to convince the world that Vista was a good product with bad buzz; Vista had nothing that counterbalanced all its aggravations.

Sure, the folder search on the fly was handy, and the checkboxes that could be used to select files were rather clever. But that's about it. I liked the new start menu, but I discovered that the best thing about it, the ability to type in a program name to find it, can be more-or-less replicated in XP with a freeware program called Launchy that actually works better than Vista's version of the same idea.

Microsoft should never have released Vista, which is the most disastrous OS update since Windows ME. And once they realized it was a disaster, they should have spent time trying to fix its serious flaws with a series of service packs rather than devoting all their energy on their next OS. Microsoft has pissed a lot of people off and made as convincing a case as anyone can that there is no reason to upgrade, ever. XP works fine, there still seem to be drivers for everything and if we just all agree to stop buying new Microsoft OSes then we can all just keep using XP until some Linux programmer comes up with a satisfactory solution for playing games on PCs.

Friday, March 13, 2009

While Windows Vista, the poorly designed mess that makes hell of the life of anyone stupid enough to install it, has been seen as just another Microsoft screw up, I've begun to wonder if perhaps Microsoft is depressed and is trying to kill itself. Like people who do really dangerous things until they die, as opposed to people who just shoot themselves.

This has come to mind because for about the third time, Vista has decided it might be pirated software and is bothering me about it. Last time I had to phone up Microsoft and spend 10 minutes convincing a human this really was a genuine copy of Vista (sent to me by Microsoft's PR people). This time there's no one to call; I'm getting a pop up, and none of the solutions on Microsoft's website work.

With all the problems and disappointments of Vista, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to want the next version of Windows. Vista sucks so badly that Microsoft has pretty much shown that they have no idea how to design an operating system.

A bunch of smart people work for Microsoft though, so how could that be? I think instead the whole company has gotten depressed that Gates is gone and they've decided to just keep using Vista to fuck with people until no one will buy Microsoft products anymore. Then the company will die and I think we'll all be happier for it.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

A few months ago, conservatives claimed Obama's "lipstick on a pig" remark was a sexist slap at Sarah Palin. Liberals and people of common sense rose up as one to say, justifiably, that the claim was absurd; just because you mention lipstick and a pig in mocking John McCain's claims of bringing change to Washington does not mean you are attacking a woman.

Now those same liberals who decried McCain's attacks on the lipstick remark as transparent political posturing are up in arms over a cartoon in the New York Post in which a chimp is said to have authored the stimulus package. Notorious opportunist Al Sharpton claims that the cartoon is a racist attack on Obama, and the liberal media has fallen in lockstep behind him.

But no, it's not. It is no more racist than Obama's lipstick remark was sexist. The cartoon isn't funny, or clever, and The Post is a right wing piece of shit, but that doesn't make the cartoon racist.

People are looking for subtleties in a cartoon devoid of any. The cartoonist just took his cue from the recent shooting of a chimpanzee gone mad and clearly meant to suggest nothing more than that the stimulus bill was a mess.

The chimp is not made to look like Obama, even though some headlines are describing it as Obama portrayed as a chimp. On the other hand, there is an entire website devoted to comparing George W. Bush to primates, and a cartoonist for the British paper the Guardian frequently presented Bush as an ape.

I suspect you could find a wealth of political humor over the decades comparing presidents with monkeys; the monkey/chimp/ape is often used to reference a lack of intelligence. Are monkeys now verboten from political humor because someone has decided they are racist? I would say any cartoonist that drew Obama as a monkey would just be asking for trouble, but are we now in a place where no monkey can appear in any cartoon referencing the Democrats?

I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of people defending Obama's lipstick remark and then turning around and attacking the Post for something quite similar. If it's wrong for one side to play these opportunistic games, then it is just as wrong for the other side to do it.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Imagine you’re at this party and you start talking to this guy. He’s a really cool guy, and he starts telling you a story that is one of the most interesting you have ever heard. It’s a story you think can’t be topped, but then he segues into another, even better story, and you think, wow, this is the coolest guy ever.

Forty minutes later he’s still talking, and it’s all still pretty interesting, but it looks like the alcohol’s running out and there’s this really hot girl talking to a friend of yours and you’re thinking, is this guy ever going to run out of stories? And after another 10 minutes you decide no, he is never going to run out, or pause to take a breath, and you politely excuse yourself.

This is the best analogy I can come up with for why I’m not going to watch the new season of Lost.

If Lost had wrapped up its story at the end of season three it would have been a short but perfect series. But now, as season five is about to kick off, I just don’t care anymore.

It was obvious by the middle of season three that Lost was losing focus. It was still really good, it still had a lot of “wow” moments, but it felt like there was a little more filler, that the show had to go a little too weird to keep up the momentum, and that it was really time to wrap things up. I even thought of blogging an open letter to the producers asking them to make that season the last one, but never got around to it. It is unlikely they would have listened anyway.

I didn’t think the show had anywhere to go by season three’s end until that last “wow” moment in which we get a glimpse of post-island life. Perhaps, I thought, this new twist would kick start the show back into high gear.

It didn’t. Instead, Lost increasingly seemed like a show going in a thousand directions at once. Since season one I’ve been worried that the series could never wrap all its bizarre twists and turns into something that made sense. I thought it would end with nothing but loose ends. But as Lost kept explaining one thing in a convincing manner while introducing something else, I began to think maybe they would pull it off.

As season four progressed though, I came to the conclusion that such a thing was no longer possible. The show has increasingly relied on a sloppy mysticism and it is my belief that the producers have probably convinced themselves that the Island should remain in great part a mystery. I do not believe they plan to offer a satisfactory explanation to all these years of weirdness, and that because they’re not planning to explain, they feel free to throw in more and more "out there" plot turns.

I could be wrong, but it’s unlikely, because you could not at this point explain everything in a two-hour finale. They would have to start explaining things bit by bit from the first episode and do that all season, without introducing any new mysteries. And based on the last four years, I don’t think that will happen.

Season four once again had me thinking about writing that open letter, but once again, I didn’t. It would not have mattered; the producers had actually decided already that they were going to end the series ... in 2010.I can't go through another two years of unanswered questions, weird pseudo-science, and characters who refuse to answer the simplest question in a straightforward manner (seriously, if I were on that island I would've tied Benjamin to a chair and beat him with a stick until he told me what that smoke monster was). If Lost were a book, I would be jumping ahead to the last page right now.

Will all our questions be answered in two years? I doubt it. I expect the show will end with many loose ends, the producers will decide to make a Lost movie they promise will explain everything, the movie will come out and simply add some more mysteries and everyone will feel like a sucker.

So I'm done. By the end of season four I had simply lost my enthusiasm for what was once my favorite dramatic series. I just don’t care what happens from now one, except to the extent that when the series is finally ended I will go to Wikipedia and find out how it all turned out.

Lost isn’t the only series at this party, and I’ve listened to enough of its stories. Now I’m going to go over and say hello to that hottie from Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.

About Me

I have written about technology and video game reviews for The New York Times, About.com, and others. I have just finished a novel and am currently searching for an agent. I am a passable and passionate Lindy Hopper. I live on the edge of the known universe, a.k.a. Washington Heights.